The midfielder on rejecting
Arsenal as a teenager and how he chose to join Leicester after watching them on Sampdoria’s team busEverything was a bit last minute when Dennis Praet completed his £18m transfer from Sampdoria to Leicester City last month. The
Belgium international did his homework on his new club on the Sampdoria team bus and when he turned up at Leicester to sign a week or so later it was without the tools of his trade.
“It was a really close call because it was deadline day,” Praet says. “I arrived at the training ground but there were some small issues with the contract and I think it was only one hour before the deadline that everything was figured out, so I signed just in time. But I arrived here with the thought that if I sign, I could go back to get my stuff I needed. But the gaffer really wanted me to stay for the first game. I had no boots, so I did two training sessions and the first game with somebody else’s. I don’t even know whose they were.”